M4

M4

London to Pont Abraham

Easily one of the most varied motorways in Britain, from urban chaos in west London and Heathrow Airport, out through the rolling hills of Gloucestershire, across the Severn Estuary and through industrial South Wales, the M4 does it all.

Routes
M4

M4 and A4

Serving Reading, Bristol and South Wales, the A4 and M4 are one of London's most important approaches. But the wildest fantasies of the sixties couldn't overcome its trickier problems.

Routes
M4 A4

No exit 05 April 2018

Bristol’s M32 recently gained a new junction for buses only. To mark this strange new addition to the motorway network, here are five places you can’t leave the motorway.

Routes
Tags

M4 in Wales

One man's account of the building of the M4 through Wales, seen as he grew up in Swansea and witnessed it stage by stage - a tour of the motorway from its construction to the present day.

Routes
Histories

What's new

The forever bottleneck, part 2

The second part of the story, where we learn why exactly the M4 gets narrower on the final approach to Europe’s biggest city.

The forever bottleneck, part 1

The M4 into London was one of the UK's earliest and most ambitious motorway projects. It was bold, pioneering... and almost instantly regretted.

Hello, here's my ridiculous side project

An introduction to what I write, and why I write it, and where my strange new road sign simulator fits in to all this.

Share this page

Have you seen...

Alley by gaslight

Some of Central London's quieter streets are still, surprisingly, lit by old and rather beautiful gas lanterns. Here are a few, by day and by night.